How to lose friends and alienate people
Arts Theatre, London WC2
It was inevitable that Toby Young, the British hack who has built a career out of being (in his own words) 'a demented self-saboteur', would eventually push his luck too far. And when he announced that he would be playing himself in a stage version of How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, his agonisingly funny memoir of his plummet to the bottom of the New York media barrel, it looked as if that moment had finally arrived. It was bad enough when Jack Davenport, who is tall, sexy and has lots of hair, played him on stage in 2003.Young, however, looks very much like Harry Hill and, moreover, is theatre critic of the Spectator. Certifiable, no?
It doesn't look good. Making his entrance, Young is all bluster and nervous tics: lip-licking, adjusting his specs, waving huge white palms about like an Italian traffic cop. The mannerisms obstruct what he is saying; lines wither on his lips. You don't hear him; you just 'watch' him, a man disappearing down the plughole. Then he gets heckled (possibly by a Vanity Fair plant). Rallying, Young manages a decent put-down and, after that, rather miraculously, everyone starts to enjoy themselves.
